1. Why does every child not go to school?
Education For All
Why does every child not go to school?
Photo: Arjun Kohli/Arete Stories/ActionAid

2. Education for all
This presentation is about education and why every child does not go school. There has been progress towards education for all children. However there are still many children out of school, and the system remains unfair. We will try to understand why this is and explain the main barriers to sending every child to school.
Let’s begin by asking why we go to school. Ask for ideas of why we go to school and why is it important – e.g. to gain qualifications, to learn, to play, to make friends.
Photo: Aubrey Wade/Oxfam

3. How many children are missing out on primary school?
35 million
58 million
90 million
How many children around the world do you think don’t go to primary school?
Is it:
35 million?
58 million?
90 million?
In 2015 the number of children out of primary school was nearly 58 million.
Statistics from UNESCO Education For All Global Monitoring Report:
Photo: Arjun Kohli/Arete Stories/ActionAid

4. Why do children not go to school?1. 2. 3. 4.
There are many reasons why children don’t go to school. Ask the young people what they think are the main reasons. You can use the pictures as clues.
1. There often aren’t enough teachers. Or teachers don’t have qualifications.
2. Frequently there also aren’t enough classrooms or resources. Many children live a long distance from the nearest school and it’s too far to travel. Lots of schools lack basic facilities such as clean water and toilets.
3. Children of poor families may work and not attend school. Or parents may be unable to afford the costs of their children attending school.
4. In some places, specific groups of children, such as girls or ethnic minorities, face barriers to getting an education. Disability is also a big barrier.
Finally, in some places the education system has collapsed because of war, conflict or disasters.
Photos
Suzi O'Keefe/Oxfam
Irina Werning/Oxfam
Mohammad Alam/Oxfam
Alun McDonald/Oxfam

5. The poverty barrier The poverty barrier.
This is Fatima. She is 10 years old and lives in Nigeria. Her family doesn’t have enough money to pay for school uniform, books and other materials. Even small amounts of money represent a big barrier to education for poor families. If there is a choice between a boy and a girl going to school, it is often the girl who misses out.
So Fatima doesn’t go to school. Instead she helps her mum with household chores and sells onions outside her house. But Fatima’s family would like her to go to school. Fatima’s mother Hadiza says, “if my children become educated I think their future will be better”.
Photo: Akinkugbe Okikiola/ActionAid

6. The conflict barrier The conflict barrier.
In 2015 Mohamed was 12 years old, a refugee forced to flee Syria’s brutal civil war. He was living in a refugee camp in Lebanon and hadn’t been to school for 5 years. Instead he worked selling fruit and vegetables near where he lived with his family. In 2016 it was estimated that half of all Syrian children were out of school.
Altogether in 2015 there were 37 million children missing out on school in crisis affected countries. This includes countries, like Syria, experiencing violent conflicts, countries affected by natural disasters (such as earthquakes and floods) and countries with health emergencies (such as the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa). However in 2013 only 2% of humanitarian aid was invested in education.
Photo: Lisa Rutherford/Oxfam GB

7. The disability barrier
How many children who are missing out on school have a disability?
4 million
11 million
24 million
The disability barrier.
How many of the 58 million children who don’t go to school have a disability?
4 million children
11 million children
24 million children
Answer = 24 million children.
Many of the barriers that face all children, like long and difficult school journeys or a lack of water and sanitation in schools, become even more difficult for children with a disability.
Children with a disability require extra resources. Education budgets in many countries barely cover the costs of mainstream education never mind the costs of special needs education. In many countries disability is seen as a shame, and children with disabilities are denied their rights. The result is that many disabled children miss out on school.
Statistics from UNESCO Education For All Global Monitoring Report:
Photo: Arjun Kohli/Arete Stories/ActionAid

8. The gender barrier The gender barrier.
This is Gbessay from Sierra Leone and she was 15 years old when this photo was taken. Gbessay had never been to school and was learning to sew at a vocational training centre. She only learnt to read when she was 13 years old. A mixture of different factors – poverty, child labour, gender inequality and her family frequently moving house – meant that Gbessay never attended primary school.
In 2016 twice as many girls as boys across sub-Saharan Africa had never been to school. Despite big efforts to provide equal opportunities for girls and boys, being born a girl is still a big barrier to getting an education.
Photo: Aubrey Wade/Oxfam GB

9. The time barrier The time barrier.
How many years do you go to school for?
In the UK, the average number of years spent in school is years, from age of 5 to the age of 16 or 18 for girls and boys alike. However in rural areas of Nigeria, girls spend an average of only 3 years in school.
In some parts of Nigeria, girls can spend as little as 6 months in school. Many girls drop out of school because:
There may be a shortage of female teachers.
There is a long distance to walk to school and there may be dangers that affect girls more than boys.
There is a lack of water and toilets at school.
Social attitudes prioritise boys education over girls education, especially when tough choices have to be made about which child(ren) in a family get to go to school.
In many countries children drop out of school during the transition from primary to secondary school. If you add together all the children and young people missing out on both primary and secondary school, there were 263 million young people out of school in 2016.
Statistics from UNESCO:
Photo: John McLaverty/Oxfam

10. The classroom barrier The classroom barrier.
What is it like to go to school in a country without school facilities for all children, like this school in Afghanistan?
Many classes are taught outdoors because of a shortage of classrooms. This may be enjoyable for a short time if the weather is pleasant, but it becomes very difficult to learn if the weather is poor.
School buildings are frequently in poor condition and lack basic facilities like desks, chairs, toilets and electricity. In many classrooms the only equipment for the teacher and students is a chalkboard and a piece of chalk.
Photo: Shah Bibi/ACBAR

11. The teacher barrier The teacher barrier.
Imagine school without a teacher. Around the world millions of children are missing out on school because they don’t have a teacher. And millions more who are enrolled in school learn in overcrowded classrooms because there aren’t enough teachers to teach them. Altogether the United Nations estimates that there is a shortage of 1.7 million teachers around the world.
In most developed countries, teachers must have a university degree followed by teacher training and further ‘on the job’ learning. But in many developing countries large numbers of teachers are unqualified. Many have received no or very little formal training.
Photo: Adam Davies/Oxfam

12. The class size barrier The class size barrier.
The challenges don’t end however, once a child is enrolled in school and has a place in class. How many children are there in your class? I’m sure the answer is around 30.
Although there are desks and chairs for everyone, what do you think learning is like in the classroom you can see in the photograph? Is the teacher able to help each individual child? The global shortage of teachers and classrooms means there are overcrowded classrooms in many schools. Class sizes of 100 or more are not unusual.
Photo: Chris Morgan/GCE/ActionAid

13. The pay barrier The pay barrier.
This is Ishaku Yaro, an Assistant Headteacher in Nigeria. He says the most difficult thing about being a teacher is not being paid for his work every month; “how can you plan when you are not paid when you are meant to be paid?”
It’s difficult to recruit qualified and well motivated teachers if they are not paid their salaries regularly. Yet often education budgets do not cover the pay for sufficient teachers and the cost of school facilities.
Photo: Chris Morgan/GCE/ActionAid

14. The funding barrier The funding barrier.
The pay barrier is linked to the funding barrier. Let’s visit Malawi in southern Africa. Malawi is one of the poorest countries in Africa. Teachers and school facilities cost money. How much do you think the government of Malawi spends on each primary schoolchild per year? (For comparison, in 2015 the UK spent between £4,000 and £8,500 per child per year).
Is it:
£50
£150
£500
£1,000
In fact the government of Malawi spends £34 on a primary child per year.
Even if many poor countries could afford to spend more on education, they still wouldn’t have sufficient money to provide a quality education for all their children. In these circumstances the richer countries have agreed to support poor countries with overseas development aid. This aid partnership helps to top up poor countries’ education budgets and improve the education they provide for their children. As countries become better off they should be able to invest more of their own money, raised as taxation, in education.
Statistics from Send My Friend to School:
Photo: Karen Garvin/ActionAid

15. So if we are all in education why isn’t everyone?
Can young people summarise the different barriers which we have now learnt about to explain why? Ask young people if they can identify any of the most important barriers, and to start thinking about how these barriers can be overcome.
Photo: Emma Cooney/Oxfam

16. Thank You!
Thank you!
Photo: Abbie Trayler-Smith/Oxfam